Superbowl Commercials. Best of the "Meh"

Being the Monday after the 2012 Superbowl, I felt compelled to write a post on the anxiously awaited flood of commercials we get on Superbowl Sunday during the pre-show, during, and post-show coverage. At an average of 3.5 million per 30 seconds this year, they should've all been eye-catching and memorable. When I saw the title of this article, "Best Superbowl Commercials 2012: The Best of the 'Meh'," that summarized my Superbowl commercial viewing experience. I'm not a die hard fan of any NFL team, so naturally I tune into the Superbowl simply as tradition and with an interest in advertising, for well, the commercials, but I was underwhelmed by what I saw. However, there were a few campaigns that stuck out to me and that I thought were incredibly clever.


Interestingly, I saw many more car commercials than I ever remembered. I don't know if that is a difference from previous years, or simply due to the fact that I am working on a campaign for Nissan right now with the National Student Advertising Competition. I was surprised to see that this site rated theVolkswagen ad "The Bark Side," on which I negatively wrote my last post on, as the best commercial from last night. I preferred their other ad "The Dog Strikes Back," rated here as #3. They brought in their last year's Star Wars concept at the very end in a comedic spoof, but the rest of it was focused on advertising the car, which I thought "The Bark Side" lacked.


My other favorites included the Acura "Transactions" ad featuring Jerry Seinfeld trying to get himself in the first slot for a new car, using his connections to bribe an everyday consumer and ends up losing to Jay Leno, and the Oikos yogurt "The Tease" ad with John Stamos annoyingly taunting his girlfriend over a bite of yogurt. Of course the E*Trade commercials have stayed amongst my favorites since they exploded a few years ago, but those are now going strong year-round so it wasn't a shock to see one of their ads featured during the Superbowl.


Overall, I did see some extremely creative concepts. Nothing that will last long as far as brand image, since many companies went with the route of celebrity endorsements for these ads, but they were nonetheless enjoyable. I have always wondered though, and I may be asking too much of the creative teams and copywriters for these companies, but my question has always been, besides an increased budget, why isn't this much effort put into the creative ideas behind these commercials all year long? Just a thought.